Eckerd's Stockholders Vote Next Week On Going Private

April 26, 1986|By United Press International

CLEARWATER — Once dubbed the ''nation's richest druggist,'' Jack Eckerd is getting ready to cash in on the giant drugstore chain he founded 34 years ago.

If all goes as planned and the Jack Eckerd Corp. Wednesday goes private again, the lanky Clearwater politician-businessman and his wife stand to pocket more than $36 million for their 1.1 million shares of stock.

Eckerd's nephew, E.M. O'Herron Jr., who founded the Eckerd stores in North Carolina, and his wife hold 1 million shares. They would walk away with $33 million.

Chairman Stewart Turley, who owns 39,759 shares and has been chairman since Eckerd entered politics in 1975, stands to take home $1.3 million.

After a disastrous 1985 in which Jack Eckerd Corp., for the first time in many years, posted a loss -- $8.3 million on sales of $2.5 billion -- Turley and 27 other members of top management arranged to take the corporation private in a $1.4 billion leveraged buy-out by Merrill Lynch Capital Partners. In a leveraged buy-out, the buyers typically borrow money to acquire a company and repay the loans with the company's earnings or by selling some of its assets.

Eckerd Corp. has been traded publicly for about 25 years.

Jack Eckerd founded the company in 1952 when he bought three drugstores in Florida, but he has not been active in the corporation since he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Florida and started a foundation that sponsors camps for emotionally disturbed children.

In the offices of his Clearwater foundation, Eckerd, 72, has spent recent weeks working on his final speech to stockholders, who will vote on the offer at the annual meeting Wednesday at the Airport Marriott in Tampa. He refused to discuss the buy-out.

Eckerd management expects the offer to be approved easily. Seven stockholder lawsuits originally were filed opposing it. But all of the suits were settled April 18 when the Merrill Lynch group increased its offer to $33 a share in cash. The initial bid was $28 a share in cash plus a $5 subordinated debenture.

''The $5 paper was of questionable value,'' said Richard Greenfield, a Haverford, Pa., the lawyer who represented the stockholders. ''There is no opposition at this point'' to the buy-out, he said a few days before the vote. Eckerd stock has traded near $33 for several weeks. It had fallen as low as $20 in the past year.